Australia’s first female High Court judge dies at 83

Australia’s first female High Court judge, Mary Gaudron, has died aged 83.

After receiving a scholarship to the University of Sydney, she left it with the university medal in hand. Asked to comment on the award going to a female rather than a male, she said: “The only difference between us is that I sit down to pee!”

Justice Gaudron at the High Court.Fairfax MediaGaudron’s distinguished career included time as a barrister – after being turned down for legal clerkships by lawyers who would not hire women – then becoming the youngest federal judge on the former Conciliation and Arbitration Commission as deputy president.

She was also the inaugural NSW legal services commissioner and the NSW solicitor-general – the first woman to hold that role in any Australian jurisdiction.

In 1987, aged 44, she became the first female judge of Australia’s High Court.

She was a deciding voice on the landmark Mabo case, which recognised the ownership of a group of Torres Strait islanders over Queensland’s Murray Island which also held that native title exists for all Indigenous people.

Justice Mary Gaudron (left) at Admiralty House in 2011 with then-prime minister Julia Gillard, governor-general Quentin Bryce and then-attorney-general Nicola Roxon.Wolter PeetersIn a joint judgment, she wrote that Aboriginal dispossession of their land was “the darkest aspect of the history of this nation”.

Gaudron retired in 2003, aged 60, to work at the United Nations’ International Labour Organisation.

Governor-General Sam Mostyn said in a statement she was “deeply saddened” by Gaudron’s death. “Justice Gaudron was a trailblazer of remarkable intellect. Her career was defined by a series of firsts. She was the first woman to take silk in NSW, the first woman to serve as state Solicitor-General and, in 1987, the first woman appointed to the High Court of Australia.

“Justice Gaudron broke barriers at every stage of an extraordinary legal career.”

Gaudron had three children: daughters Danielle and Julienne with her first husband Ben Nurse, and son Patrick with second husband John Fogarty.

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